This classic treatment of the 1960s-1970s avant-garde jazz in the United States is an essential guide to one of the most dramatic, significant, and fruitful of modern American artistic movements. That movement's impact is still felt in music played in all styles all over the world.
Donald Trump has often appropriated the jazz/soul work The Snake of musician and radical social activist Oscar Brown, Jr. to drum up fear of immigrants. But in Oscar Brown's telling the story has a very different meaning. Complete story here.
Hugh Masekela - trumpeter and singer-songwriter was a pioneer of jazz in South Africa and a campaigner against apartheid in exile. The "Father of South African jazz," Masekela died in Johannesburg Tuesday. Masekela was one of those rare artists who succeeded in fusing politics with music, making his songs and performances compelling and timeless.
General John Kelly's Credibility Takes a Hit. C Jam Blues | Robi Botos, piano,? Dave Young, Bass, and Alvin Queen, Drums. Immigrant Prisons. What Are Gravitational Waves? Generation Revolution: Documentary Trailer.
U.S. Homeland Security has informed jazz great Alvin Queen that he will not be able to enter the country to perform at a concert in Washington, D.C. next month because of a brush with the law over 50 years ago, when Queen was a minor. Here is Queen on the drums in Oscar Peterson's C Jam Blues.
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Steely Dan co-founder Walter Becker produced compelling combinations of jazz-infused guitar and elusive lyrics. Sound from the 1972 studio version, video from the 1973 Midnight Special. RIP 1950-1917.
Once you discover that you can, then you must. And it's not easy. You have to take direct steps. You really have to count your blessings and you have to make a decided effort to not get seduced by the blues. -- Al Jarreau
In the 1970s a group of African American experimental jazz improvisors organized musician-sponsored concerts in a network of lower Manhattan lofts. The music they produced was not only sonically adventurous, much of it was also driven by a host of social concerns. Michael Heller has published a new history of this movement. Michael J. Agovino helps guide us through this important cultural moment.
Does it matter that stretches of "Miles Ahead"— a gun-rattling, squealing-tire car chase included — came out of the filmmakers’ imagination rather than Davis’s life? Purists may howl, but they’ll also miss the pleasure and point of this playfully impressionistic movie.
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